DOUBLE CONTAINMENT LEFT SIDE RELATIVE INTENSITY.
The dial is marked from one to eleven, with the dial set at the center point, six. The other two dials appear to control quad mode settings. As we are clearly in double mode, the quad settings are not of any consequence." "Twist the double level to one side as far as it will go-" Q9 did so, and the force field forming the children's containment promptly darkened, so much that the effect was plainly visible even in the near darkness of the repulsor chamber. "Turn it the other way," Anakin said. Q9 did so, and the field faded away again, until it was completely invisible, even in infrared. Anakin pushed at the field again, and it gave a bit more this time-but even pushing as hard as he could, he could not get out. "Any more controls on that thing?" Anakin asked. "That is all," Q9 replied. "Thought so," Anakin said. "Couldn't feel anything else." "Then why did you ask me?" "Because I wanted to be sure!" Anakin said. "Don't act so weird, okay?" "Am I still behaving strangely?" Q9 asked, "Or do you just want me to think I'm behaving strangely? Is that your plan?" "Q9, we don't have lime for this," said Jacen. "Later. Whatever it is you're doing, do it later. All right?" Q9 looked at him suspiciously. "I am not 'doing' anything besides following orders." "Never mind," Anakin said. "Q9-is it all as low as it can go? So it makes the field as weak this side as it can be?" "As low as it can go without the key, yes." "All right," said Anakin. "Hope it's good enough. Here goes." He extended his arms in front of him and spread out his stubby fingers as far as they would go. He shut his eyes and stepped forward, until his hands were in contact with the force field. "Gotta move slowly," he reminded himself. Pushing slowly, gently, he thrust his hand deeper and deeper into the weakened force field. The field around his hands began to shimmer and spark, brightly at first, but then fading away, until Anakin was standing in a pushed-out bubble of the force field, a bubble that was marked by dim, shimmering flickers of power. Anakin pushed farther on, but seemed unable to make further progress. "Help me," he said to his brother and sister. Jacen and Jaina stepped cautiously forward into the extruded bubble of the force field. Jacen shut his eyes and stretched out his hands. He frowned and shook his head. "I don't see what you are- Oh, I get it." He pushed out his hands farther, and Jaina did the same. The bubble lit up again with shimmers and sparks that did not light up quite as much as they did the first time, and that faded away more quickly and more completely. "Try again, Anakin," said Jaina. Anakin pushed on the force field with just his left hand this time, with slow, steady pressure that stretched the field farther and farther. And then, moving quite slowly and gently, he bunched up his fingers into a fist and extended just his index finger. He pushed forward with his finger, stretching the field farther and farther until, at some gradual and indefinable moment, the tip of his finger was through and outside the field, on the other side. "Jacen, take my hand," said Anakin. "Jaina, take his." Jacen grabbed his brother's right hand in his left, and Jaina took Jacen's right in her own left hand. Anakin pressed onward, until his whole finger, his whole arm, his shoulder, his head, his chest, were through. He leaned forward, pushing slowly, steadily forward. He lifted his left leg up, forcing it gently up and through the field. The field sparked and shimmered for a moment as his leg slipped clear of it and he set it down on the outside. His right leg seemed to move through more easily. And then, but for his right arm, he was through, and on the outside. He kept moving forward, very slowly, leaning forward as he pulled, dragging his brother's arm out through the field. The field sparked and shimmered with greater violence when Jacen's hand touched it. Jacen winced, and almost flinched backward. There was the crackle and spark of static electricity as his hand moved forward through the field. It was as if the field was resisting him more than his brother, and it was plain to see from the expression on his face that it was far from a pleasant sensation. The field seemed reluctant to let his head come through, and sparks and fire flickered about his face. His head broke through quite abruptly, and he let out a little grunt of pain as it did. His hair sprang straight out from his head, alive with static electricity, something that had not happened to Anakin. The sparks flared and flickered about him as he forced one leg and then the other through the field. Jaccn gasped with relief as his body broke free of the field. Anakin still held his left hand, and the two boys moved slowly out from the field as Jacen pulled Jaina's hand through the field. Sparks shimmered again, but in a deeper, duller, angry color. "Ow!" Jaina said. "It's-it's like fire." "Just keep coming," Jacen said. "Your hand is free of the field. Keep your eyes shut. It's easier that way, believe me. Keep coming. Keep coming. There's your arm free. Here comes your head. Hang on! Hang on! Almost free. All right, your face is clear. That's the worst part. You should see your hair! No, don't open your eyes yet, but it's sticking straight up from your head. Good. Good. Now push your leg through. Steady. Easy does it. Good. Good. Now the other one. Up, over, through. Good. Just the foot to come- whoops!" Jaina tumbled down onto her brother as she broke free of the field, and Jacen went down, taking Anakin with him. The stretched-out part of the force field shimmered and sparked one last time, and then retracted, shrank, pulled back, merging smoothly back into the rest of the field, as if there had never been such a thing as a distortion in the field's surface. "Boy, that hurt," Jaina said. "Like getting a shock all over my body." "I think it was worse for you than me," Jacen said as the three children disentangled themselves from each other and helped each other up. "Did it hurt you at all, Anakin?" he asked his brother. Anakin shook his head. "Nope. It sort of tickled a little bit. Well, it didn't feel nice like tickling, but sort of like that."' "That was impossible, of course," said Q9. "What you just did was quite impossible. No one can walk through a force field that way." "We didn't go through it, really," Anakin said. "It was more like we went between it. Stretched it out until there was room between the field, sort of. Then I just pushed the parts apart, and went through. That's all." "Ah. That's all. Thank you. That makes it all quite clear, I assure you." "Anakin-what about Chewbacca and Ebrihim and Aunt Marcha?" asked Jaina. Anakin shook his head. "I don't think I can do it from this side," he said. "Not to pull people through. It's harder to do, the bigger and heavier you are." "Can you do anything with the control panel?" Jaina asked. Anakin went over and looked at the panel, put his hand over it, and shut his eyes. He concentrated, focusing his attention deep inside the device. At last he took hishand off and opened his eyes. "No," he said. "But you can make all sorts of machines do whatever you want," Jaina protested. "Yeah, but that's easy," Anakin said. "Real little stuff I can move around. I can make stuff do what it's supposed to do. But the lock insides are too big. And the lock's doing what it's supposed to do. It's already working." "I couldn't ask for a clearer explanation," said Q9. "But I take it you can't get the others out?" "No," said Anakin. "Not without the key." "I see you had this all carefully planned out in advance," Q9 observed. "The plan was that you would be able to pick the lock," Ebrihim said, rather severely. "But that is all to one side. If we indeed cannot get out, obviously the children must attempt to escape on their own. With your help, of course, Q9." "What?" Q9 asked. "How? How are we supposed to get away?" "By flying away in the Millennium Falcon, of course." "Wait a second," said Jacen. "You want us to fly the Falconl" Chewbacca looked at Ebrihim, made a yawping sound, and then bared his teeth and shook his head. "I agree that it is foolhardy and dangerous," Ebrihim said to Chewbacca. He turned to the three children. "But it is nonetheless the best of many bad choices. Chewbacca, you yourself said the repairs to the Falcon were all but complete. I feel quite certain that you would have no trouble explaining to the children what still needs to be done. And I have no doubt at all they could perform the repairs. "As for the rest of it, we three in here have far, far less value as hostages, and Thrackan knows it. The three jewels are already outside this force field stockade. Anakin, Jacen, Jaina-the danger would be great if you tried to escape on your own. But I sincerely believe that the danger to you, and to ourselves, and to others, would be much less than i
f you stayed. Thrackan is a cruel and heartless man, and I do not wish you in his clutches. As I see it, there are only two possibilities. The first is that your mother goes along with what he tells her to do." "She'd never do that," Jacen said. "I quite agree. But if she did, I believe your uncle would decide you were too valuable to give up. He would keep you, in hopes of extracting further concessions. And every time she g ave in, he would have more reason to hold on to you. I believe you would be permanent prisoners." "And if Mom did give in to him because of us, a lot of other people would get hurt," said Jaina. "And killed," added Jacen. "Precisely. The second, more likely possibility is that your mother would refuse his demands. She would do so fully knowing the consequences, and it would break her heart. But she would refuse him, all the same. Sooner or later, your cousin Thrackan would either become so angry and frustrated that he would take it all out on you-or else he would threaten to torture you, or actually do so, in order to get what he wanted out of your mother." "Torture?" Jaina said. "I hadn't thought of that." "Would he really?" Jacen asked. "I think it quite possible. Even likely." Q9 looked from his master to the children, and back again. There was something unstated here, something he nearly said himself, before thinking better of it. No one was saying that it would be better for the children to have a clean, quick death in a crash rather than be the unwilling pawns in a cruel game. A cruet game where many others would suffer, a game that could only end with the pawns being destroyed at the exact moment it suited their master. How noble, how brave of them all to say nothing at all about it. How odd that he, Q9, was having such peculiar and emotional reactions to everything. Just that moment a new and terri- fying thought crossed his mind. "Half a moment," he said. "What about me?" Ebrihim looked toward Q9 and chuckled to himself. "Oh, you'll go with them, of course. What else could you do? What, exactly, do you expect Thrackan Sal-Solo would do to you if he woke up in the morning to find the chidren gone and you here?" Q9 thought that one through, and did not care one little bit for the conclusions he reached. "I might have known," he said. "It's clear now that it's all been a plot against me." "It seems to me there are other beings worse off than you in all this," Ebrihim said. "But never mind that. Go, and go now. The longer you delay, the greater the dangers will be." "But we don't know what's wrong with the ship, and we don't know how to fix it," Jaina protested. Ebrihim held up his hand with the comlink in it. "We have this comlink in here, and you children can use Q9's built-in comlink to communicate with us until you re-establish the link to the Falcon's comm system. I'll have the comlink. Chewbacca can tell me what to do, and I'll tell you. We'll walk you through it. You can do it." Chewbacca nodded his agreement, and made an encouraging little burbling snarl. "It's nice for you to say," said Jaina to Ebrihim, "but that doesn't mean you're right." "I'm sure you can do it. Now you must go," said Ebrihim. "The guards could awaken at any moment. We have no choice in the matter. Go!" The three children looked at each other for a moment, and then, moving as one, they turned and headed for the ship, leaving so suddenly and quietly that Q9 was taken by surprise. He hovered, motionless for a moment, before he swiveled his view dome about and realized they were gone. He raised himself up on his repulsors and took off after them. Admiral Ossilege himself met the Lady Luck when she landed on the hangar deck of the Intruder. He waited, resplendent in his customary dress-white uniform, and watched as the Lady's hatch swung open. "Greetings to you all,'1 he said as Lando, Gaeriel, and Kalenda disembarked, Threepio following behind. "I trust your information is as interesting as you promise, I find it most ironic that the moment we are at long last able to speak over the comlinks, we must worry about being overheard." "I think you'll agree that it's all worth hearing-and that it's worth being sure we keep it to ourselves," Lando said. "Let's get to someplace where we ean talk." "Of course," said the admiral. "We shall go to my private quarters. He glared at Threepio. "That can stay aboard your ship, I think," he said to Lando." "Well, really, how inconsiderate-" Threepio began, but Ossilege frowned fiercely enough to silence him. "The rest of you, come this way." Lando glanced toward Kalenda, but she just shook her head. No doubt the same thought had crossed her mind. The admiral spent so much of his lime on the bridge, it had never occurred to either of them that he even had quarters. But he did have them, and he led the group to them in short order. Lando had always prided himself on a sense of design, a knack for knowing what looked right. It was instantly plain to his practiced eye that Ossilege's stateroom suite was a jarring display of op-posites-the opulent up against the spartan, the huge and magnificent against the small and thrifty. The room itself was spectacular-the cream-colored walls and deep blue carpets, the sheer size of it, twice the size of any other stateroom on the ship. A huge circular viewport, two meters across, took up most of one bulkhead, and out of it Lando could see a breathtaking view of Drall framed against the night sky. The indirect lighting was warm and even, coming from every side so that it was impossible to cast a shadow in the room. The personal appointments to the room, on the other hand, were barely there at all. A camp cot sat in one corner, with a fold-up night table by its side. The cot was made up with sharp-edged precision, the pillow plumped up and set precisely in the centerline of the bed, exactly over the point where the covers and sheet were perfectly folded back. Somehow, the perfection of it all told Lando that Hortel Ossilege made his own bed in the morning, despite any number of valet droids and human servants. He was not the sort of person who would trust anyone else to make his bed properly. There was an alarm clock, a portable comm unit, and a reading light on the night table, and a single, largish book as well. Whether the volume was a novel of some sort, a weighty historical tome, ugrave; a Bakuran religious text, or the Bakuran Navy regulation book, Lando could not tell. There were absolutely no other personal items at all in the room. Whatever else he did own was presumably hidden away behind the closet doors. In the far corner near the door was a spartan, utilitarian desk with a small, neat stack of work waiting for the admiral on one side, and a much larger, but equally neat stack of work already done on the other. There were a few writing instruments lined up neatly to one side of the desk, a desk lamp, a datapad, and another comm set. Nothing else. The desk was positioned so that when the admiral sat behind it, as he did now, the splendid viewport was behind him. That was the sum total of furnishings in the room. Indeed, there were no other chairs in the room beside the one behind the desk, but even as Lando was noticing this, a gunmetal-gray service droid trundled into the room, carrying three folding chairs on its back. It set the chairs in front of the desk with surprising speed and efficiency, and then was gone. The three visitors sat down facing the desk, and Ossilege stared at them expectantly. "Tell rne," he said, "all about Centerpoint." Lieutenant Kalenda cleared her throat and spoke, a bit nervously. "The long and the short of it is that Centerpoint is the starbuster. It is the device used to make stars go nova." "I see," said Ossilege, in about the same tone of voice he would have taken if Kalenda had just told him the evening dinner menu. "And we also arc pretty sure that the planetary repulsors are the way to shut Centerpoint down." "Indeed?" he asked in the same calm tone. "Most interesting. Perhaps," he said, "you could provide me with a few details."
Star Wars - Correlian trilogy 3 - Showdown at Centerpoint Page 13